Technology

Boxer confronts troll: funny (and just a little bit scary) tweets, boring TV

Former footballer and now boxer Curtis Woodhouse has been on the receiving end of some unpleasant, trolling-style, tweets following an unsuccessful appearance in the boxing ring.

He choose to confront the troll, not just responding directly but also asking for help online to track down who the troll is and where he lives:

FORMER Hull City footballer turned boxer Curtis Woodhouse turned up on the doorstep of a Sheffield fan who branded him a “complete disgrace” and a “laughable joke” on Twitter.

Woodhouse was being verbally abused on the social networking website by an internet “troll” calling themselves The Master, after his defeat to Shayne Singleton in the English light-welterweight title on Friday.

The abuse included tweets saying “Retire immediately, you are a complete disgrace” and “Haha, you lost you silly mug, fight a 10-year-old next time if you want to actually win”.

The Driffield-born fighter responded by offering his followers £1,000 for anyone who could provide an address or photograph of the person who was “trolling” him.

He then posted saying he had got an address and later put a photograph of the street where the Master was said to live. [Yorkshire Post]

The online coverage for this confrontation was overwhelmingly positive, with only a few people expressing qualms about whether physically turning up on someone’s doorstep would spill over from reasonable response to receiving abuse to going too far. That’s particularly notable as the tweets in question were certainly abusive yet not as nasty as those involved in some of the other recent high profile cases of celebrities being trolled on Twitter.

The final stage in all this? A TV show bringing boxer and troller together, which didn’t make for very exciting viewing. As one blogger put it:

Daybreak managed to do what Curtis Woodhouse couldn’t and track down this twitter troll and bring them face to face on LIVE television. WOW – this is what everyone wanted to see and it’s finally happening. Except it’s probably the most disappointing event in the history of forever.

Basically, it’s a few days later and both men have calmed down sufficiently and they don’t even argue or shout at each other. The troll – some guy called James O’Brien who looks like he probably works in a call centre of something – is a complete pussy and says he’s completely embarrassed by his behaviour and that he’s let himself down blah blah blah blah blah. Instead of knocking him out or telling him off though all Curtis Woodhouse does is accept his apology – how lame is that?

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